A survivor of the devastating 7/7 terrorist bombings which killed 52 people in London in July 2005 today relived the horrific moment he could have been killed.

A survivor of the devastating 7/7 terrorist bombings which killed 52 people in London in July 2005 today relived the horrific moment he could have been killed.

Speaking on the seventh anniversary of the suicide bombings on the London transport network, former Cardiff University academic Professor John Tulloch said he still felt “so lucky” to be alive.

The sociology academic, who specialises in perceptions of risk and the fear of crime, was working at Brunel University in London at the time of the attacks.

He had returned from a trip to Australia the weekend before the blasts, spending his usual three days at the start of the week working at the university before travelling back to his home in Penarth, in the Vale of Glamorgan.

But in a break from routine Prof Tulloch did not leave on the Wednesday night as he had to attend a late meeting, instead deciding to catch an early train back to the Welsh capital on the Thursday morning.

“I set off early as I wanted to get a full day’s work done in Cardiff so I was going to get the 9.15am train from Paddington,” the 70-year-old said.

A woman stopped him close to Euston Square underground station to ask for directions to Camden Town, causing him to narrowly miss a Tube train.

Prof Tulloch caught the next Circle Line service towards Paddington, getting in to the second carriage to be close to the exit when he arrived.

He took a seat close to the door and piled up his roller case, laptop bag and cabin bag around himself – unaware he was sat diagonally opposite suicide bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan.

“As we just rolled out of Edgware Road I began to get up and push up from the seats. I had all these bags – it wasn’t as crowded as it had been, but I wanted to get out first.

“I got up to get to the exit first as I had three bags to pick up but then I thought it was too soon so I sat down again and then the bomb went off just then.

“If I had been up on my feet a couple of paces nearer to the door – the door Mohammed Sidique Khan was sat next to – I would have been blown to pieces. There was a great deal of good fortune.”

When the blast ripped through the carriage, killing six people, Prof Tulloch’s legs were shielded by his roller case and laptop bag which he believes saved his legs – and possibly his life.

The explosion blew Prof Tulloch’s glasses off and left him bloodied and injured, his face pockmarked with shrapnel wounds and his shirt ripped open.

He described the 50 minutes he spent waiting in the carriage for the emergency services as a “claustrophobic space with the most horrendous carnage – blood, glass and darkness, the worst material reality”.

The image of him emerging from Edgware Road station quickly became one of the most recognisable photographs in the aftermath of the disaster.

But the way the picture has at times been used in the media – including on the front page of a national tabloid endorsing new terrorism legislation – has at times angered Prof Tulloch.

He described his latest book, published last week, as “a way of dealing with the anger I felt at the way I was being used as a political football”.

Using his academic expertise to write the book, titled Icons of War and Terror, was like a form of “therapy” which prevented him becoming “bitter and twisted,” said Prof Tulloch.

The bomb left the father of two temporarily unable to walk and with permanent damage to his hearing.

“For a year or so after the bombing I had some worries I had brain damage. I was so close to the blast.

“I went to this psychologist who gave me tests and I wasn’t doing very well on short term memories of numbers, words and shapes.

“She said to me, this was about a year after the bombing, ‘Two is the magic number. It’s two years you need to wait. If you’re still like this in another year’s time we’ll begin to think there’s brain damage.’

“For a year or so afterwards I was quite concerned I did have brain damage. I even knocked back the opportunity of a promotion at Brunel because I wasn’t sure I could handle it.”

He also suffered with vertigo – so severely a passing car would cause him to vomit – and continues to deal with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Compared with what I could have had – no limbs, no eyes or dead – it’s so little and just something I have to live with,” he said.

“One of the great things is having all my limbs. There’s not been a day gone by that I haven’t actually thought about that.

“Walking in [the Blue Mountains in Australia] or on the beach and pier here are things I couldn’t have done.”

He added: “Somehow I was so fortunate. I pat my legs and think I was just so lucky.”

Remarkably, the 7/7 attack was the second terrorist bombing Prof Tulloch has survived after an IRA blast in Bristol which left more than a dozen people injured in December 1974.

He had flown back from his first academic job, based in Australia, with his wife to visit her parents. On the day they arrived, the couple decided to go to their favourite Indian restaurant.

Prof Tulloch, who was born in India, said: “We were half-way through our starters when there was a bloody great explosion outside. Nothing happened at that point to the restaurant but a lot of people left very suddenly, got out fast, so there were just a few [customers] still left.

“We were determined to stay – we reckoned we had flown 30,000 miles for this meal. Then a much bigger bomb went off.”

The blast, from a bomb placed in the doorway of the adjoining shop, blew the front of the restaurant in but Prof Tulloch and his wife escaped injury.

“We were deep enough in not to be hit by any of the flying glass or shrapnel. We didn’t get our meal.”

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